Bread Flour

What is your favorite flour for bread baking? What flour do you think provides the perfect crackling crust and chewy delightful crumb?
Ive tried Gold Medal and it was good. The texture was nice and it formed a beautiful crust but overall I wasnt impressed by the flavor.
Next up ive been experimenting with some Bobs Red Mill bread flour. Its quite nice. The crumb has wonderful mouth feel. but its not quite there yet.

what do you guys prefer?

Hey there,

I enjoy using King Arthur Flour for my bread needs; I have used their all-purpose flour only, although they do have a bread flour, and have found that it results in delicious bread. I only do hand-formed boules so far, and have no experience working with a machine - I say this because if you are using a machine to knead your bread, I've heard that the extra gluten in bread flour is more helpful. I've also heard good things about Whole Foods 365 Flour, but have never used it myself, so I can't comment.

One brand which I would suggest being a little bit cautious of is Hodgin's Mill. I've only tried their whole-wheat flour, but for whatever reason, they have chosen to do a relative "rough" grind, so that there are larger pieces of grain present. I've found that the flavor of bread made with these partial grains to be quite tasty, but getting the dough to a workable state is harder and you have to be more careful about the rise because these partial grains can cut the strands of gluten that allow the bread to rise properly, resulting in much denser bread.

Finally, let me suggest that if you are looking for a great crust, you may be looking at the wrong factors. First, are you using some type of baking stone to help retain heat and second, are you looking at anything regarding steam, which both keeps the crust soft at first to allow the heat of the oven to expand the air holes in the dough/yeast to become more active at expanding those air holes and also keeps the crust from burning. The crust with steam is a much deeper, golden brown than without steam. Perhaps see http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/07/02/steam/ for some more info!

Good luck! Always nice to see another bread baker, even if I didn't expect to find one here!

I agree with drabitthare about the importance of steam. Get a small cast iron skillet (or the lodge fajita pan works well) and stick it in the bottom of the oven. Hit it with a half cup or so of hot water when your loaf goes in.

Flour wise, I'm not all that picky. King arthur bread flour seems to work the best for me, but Pillsbury "beter for bread" and Gold Medal bread flour are also fine. I do most of my baking anymore with Gold Medal All Trumps, which is only really available in commercial sizes (I would probably use King Arthur if I could get 50lb bags locally). I also agree with the bit about Hodgson Mill flour. I use their rye, but it is really really coarse. Not sure why. Bob's Red Mill stuff is often good too, but it seems really overpriced. I mostly only buy their specialty stuff (Garbanzo flour, Teff, etc) that nobody else has.

I've not noticed any real difference in flavor based on different white flours. The bigger differences in taste really comes from technique. You really need to use a pre ferment (biga, poolish, etc), a long cold rise, or a sourdough starter to get the most flavor out of white flour.

Im not much of a machine user. I alternate between keeping a pan of water in the bottom of the oven and placing the bread in a dutch oven and cooking for the first 30 minutes with the lid on and the final ten with it off. I prefer the dutch oven method. Its a little like christmas when you take the lid off to check on the bread.
Most days i make a sponge, usually a biga. Ive also recently made a sourdough starter. Its only been a week and a half or so, but I find myself inexplicably attached to the festering mass. Clearly Ive inhaled too much flour. Breadlung is a well known cause of gluten madness.


I hear good things about King Arthur but I havent yet tried it. I'll look into picking up a bag of it, and perhaps some whole foods flour. Have any of you guys tried Pendleton mills flour? They look like they have some amazing flours.

DefaultAnon said:

Im not much of a machine user. I alternate between keeping a pan of water in the bottom of the oven and placing the bread in a dutch oven and cooking for the first 30 minutes with the lid on and the final ten with it off. I prefer the dutch oven method. Its a little like christmas when you take the lid off to check on the bread.
Most days i make a sponge, usually a biga. Ive also recently made a sourdough starter. Its only been a week and a half or so, but I find myself inexplicably attached to the festering mass. Clearly Ive inhaled too much flour. Breadlung is a well known cause of gluten madness.


I hear good things about King Arthur but I havent yet tried it. I'll look into picking up a bag of it, and perhaps some whole foods flour. Have any of you guys tried Pendleton mills flour? They look like they have some amazing flours.

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Well, it sounds like you are very much on the right track then! You might look around at a few different recipes, flavor wise as well. I really like Rose Levy Barenbaum's basic hearth bread, which has a little whole wheat and a little honey in it (and starts with a sponge). Damn near fool proof, great texture and taste. In general, I think a little flour besides white gives the best flavor. Not so much that it is really obvious, or looks like much besides a white bread, but just a little (The Barenbaum loaf is like an once and a half of whole wheat to a pound or so of bread flour)The sourdough will probably need a while before it is ready for much. I seem to recall mine would raise a loaf after a couple weeks, but took several months to taste like much. Actually, my sourdoughs have a little rye in them, as I feed my starter 50/50 white and rye

I don't know anything about Pendelton Mills flour, and unfortunately, I live about 3 hours from the nearest Whole Foods...

King Arthur or White Lily

bassopotamus said:

King arthur bread flour seems to work the best for me

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+1.
Whether making by hand or by machine.

I wouldn't be overly concerned by brand but just check for the highest % protein content flour you can find, the higher the better. As has been mentioned if you want better flavor use a longer fermentation process with a biga or starter and less yeast. Increasing the hydration level and cooking the dough in a preheated dutch oven should give you the steam and therefore crumb and crust you desire but the greater the % of wheatgerm and bran the less open the crumb.

Indigo3 said:

Don't be overly concerned by brand but check for the highest % protein content flour you can find, as has been mentioned if you want better flavor use a longer fermentation process, less yeast. Increasing the hydration level and cooking the dough in a preheated dutch oven should give you the steam and therefore crumb and crust you desire.

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It's been a while since I've really looked closely, but IIRC, King arthur is a couple percent higher in protein content than most of the other bread flours you can get at the grocery.

I find lots of all purpose brands claim to be suitable for bread but in reality at around 11.0% or so they are better for soft rolls and cake. 12.5 % + if you can find it.

I just tried some Pillsbury Bread Flour for pizza dough last week as an experiment. It seemed stickier than normal AP flour dough, but it also rose more than usual. I needed to bake it a little longer but it came out great. I think I'll need to tweak the measurements a little more but I think I might stick with bread flour for the pizza dough. I'll try again tomorrow night, pizza night. I'll probably try a 67% bread, 33% wheat mixture to solve the moisture issue.

Monkeydad said:

I just tried some Pillsbury Bread Flour for pizza dough last week as an experiment. It seemed stickier than normal AP flour dough, but it also rose more than usual. I needed to bake it a little longer but it came out great. I think I'll need to tweak the measurements a little more but I think I might stick with bread flour for the pizza dough. I'll try again tomorrow night, pizza night. I'll probably try a 67% bread, 33% wheat mixture to solve the moisture issue.

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Worked perfectly with a 75:25% bread to wheat flour ratio. Perfect dough ball last night.

I have used King Arthur All-Purpose and Whole Wheat/White Wheat with great success. I recently switched to Whole Foods own label all-purpose and whole wheat flours and enjoy very similar results (at about half the price). I bake weekly (or twice a week) and the dough is at 65% hydration (50/50 blend on the flours).

If you are going for more flavor, I think that you can have a bigger impact by changing the time and temp to let the bread rise than just changing the flour. I am a big fan of the cold ferments in Peter Reinhart's book, Artisan Breads Every Day.

I buy whats on sale... I also keep an old dough ball from the last batch and throw it into the next. Great bread everytime. (until i blew up my kitchenaid... but i fixed it...)

Speaking of bread in the oven, BRB!

BobS said:

If you are going for more flavor, I think that you can have a bigger impact by changing the time and temp to let the bread rise than just changing the flour. I am a big fan of the cold ferments in Peter Reinhart's book, Artisan Breads Every Day.

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I agree.

I always have great results with King Arthur Bread flour in my mini-Zoji.